Jeff Ashton reflects on first year as Orange-Osceola state attorney

"I think I want to see us do more trials for sure, but I want to see us do more of the right trials," Ashton says.

January 11, 2014|By Jeff Weiner, Orlando Sentinel

He had been Orange-Osceola state attorney for almost a year, and a prosecutor for three decades before that. Still, Jeff Ashton's first murder trial since Casey Anthony's made him a household name came with a few jitters.

"I honestly had a little bit of butterflies going in, because it's been 21/2 years since I was in a trial, but those butterflies went away in about five seconds, and I enjoyed it," Ashton said this week of that December trial.

Ashton won a first-degree-murder conviction and a life sentence, ending his first year in office on a high note. It was also the first case he tried personally as state attorney — something as a candidate he'd pledged to do once elected.

On Wednesday, Ashton sat down for an interview with the Orlando Sentinel. In an in-depth discussion, he reflected on his first year as state attorney — from his conviction rate to "textgate" — and his goals for the year to come.

Fewer trials, fewer acquittals

During the hard-fought 2012 state-attorney campaign, Ashton railed against the trial conviction rate of longtime incumbent Lawson Lamar. Too many weak cases were being taken to trial and lost, or thrown out by judges, Ashton said.

Lamar countered that conviction rate was a flawed statistic. The cases Ashton called "weak," he called "tough." It was the race's central clash in principles.

A year later, the data show that Ashton's office is taking far fewer cases to trial — about half as many than during Lamar's last year in office — but winning them at a higher rate, attaining guilty verdicts about 64 percent of the time.

The steep decline has led Ashton to worry the agency he once criticized for trying too many cases is now trying too few: "I think I want to see us do more trials [in 2014] for sure, but I want to see us do more of the right trials."

Ashton has also slashed the number of acquittal judgments: rulings by a judge during trial that the state's case is too weak for a jury. Ashton's first year saw 39 of those, down from 126 in 2012.

"That was the biggest thing I wanted to accomplish, was to make sure that we stop taking cases that were so bad that judges were throwing them out," Ashton said. "In my experience as a trial lawyer, that should almost never happen."

In a surprise — even to Ashton, he acknowledged — his office filed charges in about the same number of cases as it did in Lamar's last year. Acquittals are down, and a slightly higher percentage of cases ended in plea deals.

Textgate 'template'

Before he even moved into his new office Jan. 8, 2013, political intrigue was already knocking on Ashton's door.

He determined county leaders had unintentionally violated state law, and he pursued a civil penalty rather than criminal charges. Some called the outcome a slap on the wrist.

Ashton, however, stressed the transparency of his report, which "not only told people the facts that we found, but it told them the reasoning we used and why we decided what we decided," he said.

"I think the way we handled that is a template for how we'll handle all these things," he said.

Ashton in 2013 put an end to his predecessor's Government Accountability Unit but says that doesn't reflect a lack of focus on corruption.

"For me, those kind of cases that deal with elected officials ... are so important that they really need to be handled by the state attorney himself at some level," Ashton said.

Ashton's report on another high-profile controversy — allegations of collusion in the ouster of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority's executive director — looms in the new year.

"I don't really have a timeline for its completion, but it is under very active investigation," he said.

'Building momentum'

Another casualty of Ashton's restructuring was Lamar's domestic-violence unit. Its replacement, a special victims unit, lumped domestic violence with sexual battery and other crimes.

Ashton argues his intentions were misunderstood, and the SVU was intended to give domestic-violence victims access to more experienced prosecutors already handling sex crimes.

"I think now that the system has worked for a bit, I think people are seeing that we do have more experienced prosecutors, we are trying tough DV cases and we're doing what we can," Ashton said.

Carol Wick, CEO of Harbor House, spoke out against the change when it happened and says she has seen "a slight uptick" in dropped domestic-violence cases — but also reasons for optimism.

"When I approach him about an issue, he always has a reason why he did what he did," she said. "I also feel like he has been very open to suggestions. He's allowing us to go in and do really some unprecedented research."

One example touted by Ashton was the assignment of a full-time attorney to attend civil-injunction hearings, meet victims and listen for troubling cases in need of prosecution.

Ashton also got off to a rocky start with the newly formed Veterans Court: None of the cases he handled at the diversion program's first meeting passed without his objection. However, subsequent meetings have gone smoother.

"Jeff Ashton has done all that we've asked him to do," said Tommy Boroughs, an Orlando attorney and veterans advocate. "We've got it up and running. It's building momentum, slowly but surely."